Contemporary Australia: Women

105 The collaborative practice of Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano reflects on the question of artistic medium and the process of making art. Their works employ few visual elements, often documenting performances in which both sisters, who are identical twins, participate. More recently, only one of them appears or animates an object for the camera. The artists first worked together to produce the video Drawing 1 in 2001, the year that Gabriella completed a degree in drawing at the Victorian College of the Arts; Silvana completed the same degree two years later. Drawing 1 shows them identically dressed, in profile on either side of the frame, then drawing with jerky movements on a large sheet of paper on the wall beside them. The overall effect is of doubling, as though there were only one artist and the video image were mirrored along the vertical mid-line. The appearance of a single artist doubled, whose gestures recall the automatic techniques used by surrealist artists to access the unconscious, suggests the representation of a split subject — who may be drawing in order to free the other half of her mind. In the video If . . . so . . . then . . . 2006, the artists again face each other in profile, dressed the same and seeming to respond to each other’s actions intuitively. This time they are at arm’s length in a narrow space and draw on the wall next to each other’s head. The movements of the extended black-clad arms create graphic, drawing‑like effects within the video frame. The arms visually cross over in the middle of the ‘composition’ to make a strong formal arrangement in combination with the artists’ bodies. Gabriella Mangano has commented that the use of similar actions and simple, matching clothing serves to ‘erase personalities and characters’ in order to ‘emphasise the movement and motion of the drawing itself’. 1 The performance is dancelike, with a seemingly intuitive sensing of the other informing the choreography of gestures: Movement is incredibly important to us. Because we have a similar vision, [the work] doesn’t belong to anyone any more, it just grows of itself, which is a nice process. If our work was on paper, it would be: this is mine, this is yours. 2 Again, rather than two different people who look the same, the effect is of two parts of one whole. The artists’ process thus explores intuitive interaction and spontaneous meaning-making (rather than turn‑by‑turn contribution) in relation to a subject, such as drawing. Communication gives the appearance of being non-verbal and it is tempting to interpret this as possibly deriving from pre-verbal language between the twin sisters, bodily intuitions that may be outside of conscious structures. Sculpture Sequence 2012 records a sculpture in movement, with one of the artists performing as a pedestal. The video functions as an index of sculpture and is presented within a partly illuminated architecture. Viewers passing through the entrance of the work are made aware, through the lighting design, of the relationship of their bodies to the surrounding space — a defining experience of sculpture and installation — and may feel exposed or on display. When they enter the room where Sculpture Sequence is projected, they are conscious of themselves as viewing subjects in front of a video of a sculpture. Within the video there is no physical or conceptual framing of the sculptural amalgamation and its human bearer. The form of the installation space overall is reminiscent of the monumental sculptures of Richard Serra, an interesting tangential association, given Serra’s aim to divest his practice of metaphor by focusing on actions wrought on materials. 3 A black‑clad body supports a sculptural form in Sculpture Sequence. The body is a prop for the sculpture, rather than the sculpture being a prop for bodily performance. This could be compared to a ceremonial object being paraded in a ritual or dance, as for instance in the use of ‘dance machines’ in the Torres Strait Islands. The use of props in past videos encompasses objects with sculptural qualities, such as a long sheet of paper, swathes of billowing fabric Gabriella Mangano Australia b.1972 Silvana Mangano Australia b.1972 Sculpture Sequence (still) 2012 Single-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 4:00 mins Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano Adventures in medium specificity